


Pardon my French

by archea2



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Christmas, Clothed Sex, Drunk Sherlock, Drunken Confessions, Fever, Fluff, Frottage, Humor, In Vino Veritas, John in Afghanistan, Language Kink, Lestrade Saves The Day, M/M, Paternal Lestrade, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings, Voice Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-04
Updated: 2014-03-21
Packaged: 2018-01-14 13:10:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1267642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/archea2/pseuds/archea2
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock's closet Jekyll resurfaces when he's drunk, making him tender, earnest and <i>extremely</i> talkative with John. It's all fine with John - or would be, if Sherlock's Subconscious bloody let him speak English on these occasions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is an oldie, written once upon a time for the Sherlock Kink Meme during the First Hiatus: it starts right at the end of "The Blind Banker". The prompt itself was a homage to Kate Lear's fic 'L'Instinct Suffit", in case you've already spotted the resemblance.:)
> 
> So if you're in a nostalgic mood for good ol' UST with a happy ending, this might tide you over before Season 4 rolls on and brings the boys more angst!
> 
> There's some French, inevitably, but it comes with subtitles. Rated PG so far, will probably end up around a strong R - like Greg, John Watson is a man, and good at it.

_In water, you can see your own face;_

_But drink wine, and you'll see a friend's heart._

_(French proverb)_

 

It all begins with a closed case. When John and Sherlock – 

But wait.

Paradoxes are all very fine and make glittery openings. But they hardly render unto Caesar what is due to her – apart, that is, from the monthly rent (with or without the little Sherlock-induced extras) and a proper domestic tag. Let us, then, up our ante: it all begins with a closed case _and_ Mrs Hudson’s California punch, which has the colour of sangria and the vim of a thousand suns on the brink of Armageddon. This punch once played a major role in taking down the late Hudson, after he'd agreed to "a little pick-me-up after your hard day’s work, dear" on the very evening he had planned some homework. It takes some reflection to swing down a chopper on your wife’s head when she’s giving you a choice of two: by the time Mr Hudson had girded his loins, closed an eye and revised his scope, his victim was safely locked in the pantry and Sherlock, with a little help from LA’s Major Crime Division, was putting an end to his rathe amateur rendering of Jack Torrance.

It says much for Mrs Hudson’s faith in the male stamina that she mixes the very same drink upon noticing that dear John has brought his young lady home after a little outing. Sadly, circumstances independent of everyone’s will make it impossible for John to test his resilience to Bacardi 151 before the morning-end of night. And by then, his companion is no longer Doctor Sarah Sawyer.

 

\---------------------------

 

The case is closed.

And yet there is something ajar in John’s soul. It slows down his steps up the darkened stairs, uncertain if they should head straight to bed and a few hours’ rest or follow Sherlock into their common room. Something is at odds , something is flawed – lacking – some degree of happiness. This is not last time, when they had spent their first evening giggling at each other over Chinese duck salad while Sherlock deduced their future bathroom schedules from the way John held his chopsticks. The way John remembers the evening, it had been a golden hour of childish, merciless innocence on Sherlock's part - never one thought for the man that John had killed - and John had reached out for this innocence, because there was much in him that was no longer young or unsordid when it came to survival.

And he had been foolish enough to believe that life with Sherlock would be this. Well, not an all-year-round feast of slapsticks and chopsticks, to be sure, but...yes, this joy, thrill, giggling, this...synched survival? And he had wanted it. Oh, how he'd wanted it. But tonight, there's something else. Call it anger, mooring him apart from Sarah and Sherlock. The old, tired anger that he's failed to save the day again ( _and again_ , an echo from his past, _and again, and again_...); a more undercover anger at Sarah’s parting words, once she untucked herself from the loose envelop of his arm ("I’ll just go home, John" - a clear statement that home is the safe place where he is not); and finally, a tight pulse deep inside John, because this? Was Sherlock saving him, and taking his own sweet convenient _late_ time to do it.  

"Hungry?" Sherlock asks, coat in hand. His mouth twitches in what John has come to recognize as Sherlock smiling out to him, just as lesser mortals call or cry out to their friends. A smile, a signal. And with the smile comes a memory, reaching back to their first case - their first ebullient celebration.

Ah well. Perhaps there’s still time for a little celebration, now that John feels less like the butt of the case.

"Starving. Hmm, there’s always the Chinese takeaway – Christ, speak of a daft pun. And – there’s –"

But of course Sherlock has seen the two glasses, filled and left untouched on the cluttered kitchen cabinet. John wavers, then grabs them carefully before he sets back to the living-room. "I’m parched. Join me for a drink?"

Sherlock does not answer. He is looking at the glasses, and then at John as the latter steps over to the sofa, turning his back to the kitchen space. In the kitchen is the kitchen table. On the kitchen table are two trays laden with plates and forks, John and Sarah's interrupted medianoche. 

"I might."

 

\---------------------------- 

 

Twenty-five minutes later, John can't even remember why he was angry. He makes this change of mood official by stretching out a stockinged toe towards the coffee-table and stroking the belly of the carafe meditatively.

"Halffffffull."

"Oh, that dull old quandary," Sherlock sings-songs, and proceeds as per habit to prove John wrong by topping their glasses up. Needless to say, the punch has already earned its name by knocking John’s inner Esculapes flat out cold before he could so much hiss "concussion" or "empty stomach". 

"W’should – really – have toast of a thought," John says, quaffing his cup. Sherlock presses his own glass more lazily to his mouth, the punch glowing red against his pale face while John looks on, mesmerized. Most of the men he’s known drink fast and furiously, slapping the alcohol into their veins, and there’s Harry in her cups, a memory too sharp and too recent for comfort. But Sherlock drinks with slow, sensual fervor, sucking at the rum with little noises of approval in his throat until he lets the empty glass tumble into his lap and raises his eyes to John.

" _Oui,"_ Sherlock answers, enunciating the word with a clarity that John’s mind, its receiving end, is very far from sharing. " _Mais alors, je veux que ce soit à toi."_

"Er?" John knows the language – that is, John knows the language has a name that John knows – more or less - and that's the best of John's present knowledge. "Wha’ d’you say ?"

When Sherlock doesn't answer, John leans over - with no little impetus. And that's when Sherlock turns suddenly and catches his face between his hands. John freezes. His memory is not so drunk that he has forgotten how Sherlock, a few hours ago, kept his face in a vise-like grip while urging John to remember a painted wall. But tonight’s hands merely cup his face, soft fingertips resting on his temples, warm palms moulded to the curve of his jaw as Sherlock carries on, low-voiced and earnest – " _J’ai eu peur, tu sais"_ – and all John can do is marvel and stare back. " _Quand je suis rentré et que tu n’étais plus là. Peur, si peur qu’ils t’aient fait du mal. J’aurais dû avoir peur pour elle aussi, ça oui, logiquement, mais non. Toi d’abord. Toujours toi."_

"Please," John says in a wisp of breath, because this is unbearable, this strange angular language raised between them like a wall, yet rippling with mysterious intimacy. "Please, Sherlock, tell me what it is." 

But Sherlock’s head is keeling forward, as if jolted by an invisible string, and John’s heartbeat tightens, then blooms strangely at the sight. Under the tangle of hair now hiding Sherlock face, a voice comes out — young, younger than John has ever heard it. " _Je ne savais pas que je tenais si fort à toi,"_  Sherlock whispers, and one of his hands falls on John’s parted legs, sealing a patch of warmth to his thigh. 

John wets his lips, but Sherlock’s hand is already sliding off as he lets gravity toss him back to his end of the couch.

"It's French," John whispers. "You're — speaking French to me?"

But Sherlock is no longer in a condition to answer.

Looking at his friend's mouth, half-open and limber in sleep, John finds that it holds a different shape when Sherlock’s eyes are closed. By day, the eyes are all John can look at, these cold, brilliant peepholes into Sherlock's mind, brimming with nerves and silver. But hide these eyes, and there's the soft cut of Sherlock’s mouth, sucking in the air with a funny little noise. Sherlock's mouth, showing him at his most naked.

Letting slip naked, unguarded words – for John. 

John pulls himself up, lifts Sherlock’s feet and tucks them carefully under the sofa cushions. The concussion is hitting back; his head is a cat's-cradle of pain, and John knows, while switching the lights off, that he has not a mortal’s chance to remember what he heard tonight. 

He also knows, from tonight’s adventures, that ciphers can be solved.

[ _Oui, mais alors je veux que ce soit à toi_ : Yes, but then it’s you I want to toast.

 _J’ai eu peur, tu sais_ » : I was scared, you know.

 _Quand je suis rentré et que tu n’étais plus là. Peur, si peur qu’ils t’aient fait du mal. J’aurais dû avoir peur pour elle aussi, logiquement, mais non. Toi, d’abord. Toujours toi_  : When I came home and saw you were not here. Scared, so scared that they might have hurt you. Logically, I should have feared for her, too, but no. You first. Always you.

 _Je ne savais pas que je tenais si fort à toi_ : I didn’t know you were so deeply important to me.]

 

\----------------- 

 

Morning brings back England – that bruised light, peculiar to English winters, that John had missed so much in his Afghani days. Today, the light mingles with the homey smell of English tea; it pours over his flatmate even as he pours the tea, standing (predictably) in the sun and pinning down the last clues in his _very_ English drawl.

"Nine million pounds... jade... Dragon den... railway..."

The words scuttle into John’s understanding, making perfect sense as they pave the way to the end of the case. Pave a way for Sherlock to take and leave John behind, never once looking at him across the yellow teapot (the carafe has vanished). The more Sherlock explains and enlightens, the more distant his voice sounds to John, grounded to his table end by a brain-shattering migraine.

Such a far cry from last night’s ardent boyish plea. 

This is maddening, and John will be damned if he takes any more of it. So he waits until 221B has shooed them out into the first passing cab and, when it appears that Sherlock has no more to say, flings himself into the breach.

"Didn't know you spoke French, by the way."

It’s not as if he had never taken a giant’s leap before, catching up with Sherlock...

"Oh?" 

... when, that is, Sherlock allowed himself to be caught with. John spares a flicker of sympathy for Molly Hooper and ploughs on. 

"Well, yeah. You spoke it to me, yesterday night. When we – when we were sharing. That drink. You know. I remember it quite well. Don’t you?" 

There. The leap has been leapt (though it feels more like a string of lame little jumps) and now, finally, Sherlock is turning his face from the car window. There it is, that pulse of understanding; for one small moment, Sherlock’s face glows alive with an emotion that John cannot name – that could be fear, or trust, a quiet-unquiet demand – before it is shuttered out again. Sherlock turns back to the glass, imprinting his own reflection over the myriad ghost shades of London. 

"Really? No, I can’t say that I remember any of it."

And then.

"Care to tell me what I said?"

And the rest is silence, except – yes, John cares, and yes, he will. Not now, but he will. John Watson is not a man to let a challenge slip unanswered, not when it has come to him in such vivid terms. As the cab swerves to a halt before the bank, and they go their separate ways (Sherlock to dazzle a young woman and he to cash a check), John is already planning his next move.

 

\-------------------

 

To begin with, he bides his time. 

Something John is very good at, much better than Sherlock who did not have a war to tutor him in the art of waiting inaction out. John has never told anyone about his first days at the Helmand base, but this is one thing that has stuck with him. Memories of loitering among the little adobe houses, of staring up at  the chalky hills propped against the raw, stony sky, hour in hour out, until each hard breath felt like sandpaper to his lungs and he could have screamed himself raw. 

The trick, he learnt of the first old trooper who took pity on him, was this. Chequer your day in your mind, split it in ten, twenty, thirty squares, and fill each square with a task to focus on. But at the same time, keep your mind one square ahead, blankly alert – so that when the fight comes up to square off the game, it finds you rough and ready. 

Very well, then. John makes toast, boards his bus; comes home, makes tea, joins Lestrade for a bitter and a game of darts, careful to miss the bullseye (Sherlock's recommendation - why, John prefers not to ask), comes home again. And squares things with Sarah by taking her out so they can give that first date a proper burial. Sarah insists on the local Pret a Manger and John feels a tweak of guilt, but this beautiful woman is already saying "friends", is saying "colleagues" to him in very firm tones; such a relief, John feels, he can sit and eat his French roll easily enough.

Sherlock no longer says anything to him. Sherlock is hibernating in his very own Holmescape , where "Mmmmm" is the long and the short of native communication. He lies curled up in a ball on the couch – _their_ couch, John catches himself thinking – surrounded by graphs and charts like a testy dormouse under its bed of leaves, and answers "Mmmm" when asked what they are. John is sorely tempted to hand Sherlock a whiskied-up Darjeeling at  breakfast, but remembers the Hippocratic oath and takes it out on the darts.

Instead, he watches. For though he does not know in what day and hour his fight will come, John is a fair-minded man and will do nothing to trigger it forth. And come it does, one early December night, when Sherlock turns out to have been studying hypothermia _in vivo_ with a few experiments in mind. One of which apparently consists in immersing himself in the Serpentine at intervals with a mouth thermometer and nothing else on him. The venture, sadly, is brought to an early finish when Sherlock finds a swan co-experimenting in his river and proceeds to shoo him away. In the following sound and fury, he has barely the time to grab his coat and run before a gaggle of night guardians storm upon him.

It is not quite eleven when John, at home and focusing on his telly square, notices a very irate Sherlock barefoot at the door and squinting down his nose at a mouth thermometer.

John says  "Bed" out of instinct and in pure innocence. Then snatches the thermometer from his flatmate’s hands. "38. All right, genius. You get undercover, and I’ll bring you some paracetamol. And hot fluid. And then, you can perhaps explain why you chose to take a midnight constitutional in the buff." 

"Make it a grog," comes the  raucous answer as Sherlock drips away. "Mother always says it clears the head overnight. It’s the bloody bird’s fault, anyway. It tried to bite me. And it sounded like Mycroft." 

"I don’t think –"

"When do you ever? Grog," Sherlock croaks briskly, closing the door between them.

John purses his lips, takes a glance at the thermometer, another at the closed door, and steps into the hall. 

_Zero Hour._


	2. Chapter 2

"No, no, dear, not at all," says the Napoleon of Baker Street, putting up a hand to her curlered hair. "Come inside and I’ll see what I can do. Bubble, babble, beetle, battle, boobs. You don’t mind if I keep practising?"»

"Practising?"

"My LipGym, dear. Pickle, fickle, tickle, buckle, boobs. _So_ much cheaper than Botox, and it’s pepped up my language skills to no end. Now, was it Bacardi you said you wanted?"

Now she’s clicking on her kitchen lights and John, not for the first time since he’s moved in, feels an odd, warm pleasure at the view. Mrs Hudson’s kitchen reminds him of a Matryoshka doll, wood-lined and colourful, with a lick of copper here and there. And like the doll, it hides a number of smaller and smaller kitchens, down to John’s earliest, soft-sore memory of Harry heating a fork on their gas ring ( _Princess Diana curls hers too!_ ) while another stiff blond head, barely level with the cooker plugs, looked and marveled ( _don’t touch the fire, Johnny-be-good, or_ I _’ll be catchin’ hell from mum_ ).

Granted, his mum never was one to beadstitch Elton John’s face on a teacosy. Or to keep a row of potted basil, that looks surprisingly like…

"Pot, pat, put, putter, butter, boobs. Oh John, I’m so sorry. I _think_ that last tot went in the rum cake for the Vicars and Tarts Party."

John blinks.

"The Church Cake Raffle, dear. Marie Turner does like her little joke. Of course, if it’s grog he wants we could try the Costa Rican version. Paddle, poodle, beadle, boobs. Now where did I put my Evergreen?" 

Pot and Evergreen – John makes a cautious mental note to avoid all mention of Mrs Hudson’s urban gardening in certain police quarters, while the other John tips him a beady wink. "Not sure Evergreen will really keep that fever down, Mrs H. Perhaps something a tad less, er, hunky?" 

"Oh. Vodka?"

"Er." 

"Dandelion mojito? Absinthe? Devilled eggnog?"

"…"

"Scotch," Mrs H. decrees. "With lemon juice and a dollop of hot water. Because what that boy needs, well and truly needs, is a nice hot Teddy."

By now, John is a grown man with a history of fires. Who really, truly should not be feeling that hot blush creep up his neck column. "Don’t you mean a hot toddy, Mrs H.?"

"Potato, potayto," comes the pert reply as another bottle is taken out, and a kettle is put on. Then Mrs H. selects a large mug with Little Miss Sunshine’s freckled happy face on it, and proceeds to pour a drop that, in John’s opinion, would send the hardiest Fifth Fusilier straight from Northumberland to Slumberland. He’ll be lucky if he gets a French snore from Sherlock, he tells himself, watching her squeeze an innocent lemon to death and jiggle with the sugar pot.

" _A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go round, the medecine go_... Go, goggles, google, goofy, goody-goody. Good luck with your young man, dear." 

He stills, holding the fuming cup in both hands. But their landlady is already closing her door on him, her kind smile a reminder that zaniness can be uncomfortably next to canniness.

John straightens his shoulders and plunges back into the dark pit of stairs.

Their own kitchen is nothing like a doll. It smells of methanal and tea leaves left too long in the pot, and three drawers have to be prised open before John locates the paracetamol. Then he steps back into the living room, looks for tonight’s selected weapon, loads it carefully and slips it in his jeans’ back pocket.

Two minutes later, armed and dangerous, he is pushing Sherlock’s door open with his foot.

 

\-----------------------------------------

 

Rooms, it should be noted, change their skin at night.

(Now for worse, now for better. John’s old rooms in London turned out a trap at the first crack of dark. He still remembers how he switched that godawful lampshade on and off, because no light was suffocating, but light, when it came, was splayed on the wall raw and empty – and when John could no longer take the sight and jerked the curtains open, all they showed was through a glass, darkly.

His new room has tartan apple green curtains and, more often than not, a tin of home-made shortbread on the bedside table. By night, it turns into home.)

Sherlock’s room... is known to John by day. Because Sherlock, the git, still asks for things to be fetched, and John likes to stop a bit and look at that clear mad space. Sherlock’s room is half bare, half cluttered, half the walls papered with scripts and scraps and graphs and photographs, and Belknap’s arpeggios bouncing up and down on the music stand. To John’s trained eye, Sherlock’s room looks like the love child of a monk’s cell and a Rohrschach test, and he usually ends up leaning his forehead against the one wall left alone by Sherlock, who says that the white paint helps him to focus. _("Zen masters have been known to practise before a bare wall." - "...But wait, isn’t Zen supposed to free you from thinking?" - "Oh, shut up, John."_ )

Thus the room, by day. But not tonight. Tonight it looks different. For one thing, Sherlock’s bedside lamp is lit, its shade casting an arc of pale blurry gold over the bedhead. The room look more tucked in around the bed, more intimate. And in the bed is Sherlock, showered and pajama-ed, and narrowing his nostrils – " _Whisky_ " – at Little Miss Sunshine.

"Spot on, Einstein." John releases the mug into Sherlock’s hands, dropping the paracetamol on the duvet. "No need to check on your sinuses, then. And be glad you’ve been spared the ride to Costa Rica."

Sherlock’s forehead knots over the mug, in a way that John finds absurdly sweet, but he is too busy deducing the rest of his toddy to reply. By the time he is dosed and fluidized, John is sitting on the edge of the bed and the light is bending its soft curve around the two of them. It brings out the flush on Sherlock’s cheeks and face, made tender by the whisky’s benign heat, as he hands John the empty mug a little awkwardly.

"Don’t go yet."

Quiet words, barely impressing the speaker’s breath upon the air, but John nods into the gold. "Don’t want to," he says quietly.

Sherlock’s head slips back upon his pillow and he shuts his eyes.

Slowly, tentatively, John’s left hand steals around to rest on his jeans’ back pocket and take out his mobile. He brushes his thumb once across the screen, before he slips it back in place. Then John crosses his hands on his lap and listens to Sherlock’s slightly husky breath for the next minute.

" _Jean."_ The name tumbles out on a hurried, happy sigh as Sherlock’s eyelids flick open. " _Pourquoi n’es-tu pas venu avant? Il est tard maintenant."_ [John. Why didn’t you come before? It’s late now.]

The first word alone is familiar. Though I’d know it, John’s thoughts tell John wildly, his breath already quicker, I’d know it in any form, any spelling, as long as it’s him calling out to me. Or if  he didn’t speak, just lifted his, this face, this very face to me, God, struggling up from the bed and now he’s parting his lips and the fever is bringing out the pupils in his eyes, darkening them, as if the blood was rushing into his head. Is it me? Is it the sight of me, that makes them so oddly dilated, these beautiful green-grey eyes, pellucid eyes, as if they wanted to take all of me in custody? I would let you, John thinks, and leans forward to check them, his thumb brushing Sherlock’s eyelid down. 

" _Tu as l’air fatigué. Tendu, si tendu, tous ces mauvais rêves ces jours-ci, je sais bien. Je t’en cause du souci, hein?"_   _[You look tired. Tense, tense, so many bad dreams these days, oh, I know it. Worried about me, too, am I right?]_ Oh god, now he's smiling. Not his usual half-measure, that solitary mouth corner angling up as if tugged from high on by some clever fisherman. No, Sherlock is giving John the full benefit of a buoyant, double-dimpling, eye-crinkling smile under his shock of curls. " _Regarde comme tu crispes ta bouche. Et tu ne te lèches plus les lèvres. Tu te lèches toujours la bouche aux moments où tu hésites. J’adore te regarder."_ [Look how you’re pinching your lips. And you’re no longer licking them. You always lick them, every moment just before you take a decision, and I love to watch.]

The words are still an enigma. And the enigma has turned on an even worse torment, because French is such a physical language to John's ear, its ebb and flow rougher at the edge, but rippling with overt sensuousness. So that while Sherlock could be merely ordering a fresh batch of _disjecta membra_ for Christmas —

" _Ta bouche_.  _J'ai mémorisé sa forme, mais ça ne suffit pas. Je ne sais pas ce qu'elle donne sous mes doigts, sous mes paumes. Sous ma langue. Ah, Jean, si tu voulais..."_ [Your mouth. I’ve committed its form to memory, but memory is not enough. I don’t know the feel of it under my fingers, under my palm. Under my tongue. John, if only you would…]

— what John, closing his eyes in turn, visualizes is Sherlock's mouth, coated with warmth and sugar and wet nakedness. There’s a small, shy lick on his wrist, and he flinches alert. Sherlock is taking his hand, still boyish, still smiling. And he is – putting John’s finger in his mouth and giving it the lightest, shyest suck, with a sigh of relief, as if – oh fuck, this is trouble. Trouble headier than Mrs H’s entire kitchen stash, because John, too, is only flesh and feverish heart. And so, for the briefest of pauses,  John gives up all pretense at understanding. He is, after all, committing Sherlock’s words to his Nokia (poor Clara's once precious gift, complete with a Voice Memo application) and can let them wash over him, raising pulse points in his throat, his groin, his heart.

" _Si tu voulais..."_ Sherlock repeats tiredly, letting go of his hand, and the light seems to fade from his eyes, just as John leans forward to sweep the duvet off those slim shoulders radiating warmth through several layers of cotton. He is close enough to smell Mrs Hudson's Scotch on Sherlock, and he stills mid-gesture. 

This is wrong. This is Sherlock off-limits, Sherlock fevered, Sherlock _foreign_. John re-directs the swoop of his arm and turns off the lamp. Then he bends to drop an almost chaste kiss on the damp, tangled head. 

"I'll see us through this," he tells Sherlock.

Silence answers while he takes the empty cup from the bedside table. The blank wall shows him to the door. John closes it, then retraces his steps. Without looking back, he leaves the bedroom door half-ajar.

 

\------------------------

 

The new day is its customary wintry self. John pours the two of them tea.

"Feeling better?" 

Sherlock's voice is hoarse when he speaks out. "I seem to have given myself a sore throat overnight. And my mouth feels all — furry. I —" He pauses, testing the inside of his cheeks. John doesn’t look away. "Whisky. Of course. Diluted, however – mug, no, cup, telling circle on my bedside table. You took the cup away, didn't check for the mark."

"Always something." John's tones remain light.

Sherlock, however, is drumming two fingers on the tabletop. "So. Did I—"

"Yes," John says when it becomes clear that Sherlock will leave his sentence unfinished. Ashamed. No. Not ashamed. Waiting.

"And — did you —"

Hoarse voice caught speechless. White face, taut with that strange inbred defence, but John knows better by now than to rely on Sherlock's appearances when sober. He puts his own cup down and rises, letting his friend see the resolve in his eyes before he smiles. And even then, he waits for Sherlock to match the smile, if not the resolve, with his own trademark lopsided grin.

"Not — yet." 

Ten minutes later, still smiling, John flags a cab and directs it to Westminster.

 

\----------------------------

 

"John! John Watson! Come over here - the very man I’m looking for!"

Eight thirty a.m., and the Homicide section has never been so alive. Lestrade is no exception, hailing John stoutly across the bustle of early morning policemen. "Say, how old are you?" 

John grabs the chair facing the DI’s desk, now covered with a dry tide of papers. He spares them a chin nod. "Christmas lists from your team?"

"They wish. No, Budget has seen the light and is introducing us plods to..." - Lestrade squints malevolently at the sheet flattened under his fist - "... previsional result analysis. Bullshit by numbers, I say. Your age, please."

"Thirty-four. Why?"

"Perfect." Lestrade’s ballpoint pen jabs a few vicious strokes at the form. "You’ve just given me my clearance rate for 2016. Mind you hold Sherlock to your word when it comes on." A few more boxes are checked before the filler sets down his pen. "Speaking of which, where’s our bright boy? If he’s sent you for another cold case, point him straight to the break room. Coffee distributor’s blown a fuse and is serving sodding iced Arabica all around. We could all do with a spot of genius here, preferably before 2016."

John shakes his head. "He’s not with me, Greg. I’ve come to see you because I — well. I need some help. » There's a touch of concern in the tobacco-coloured eyes and John raises his hand quickly. "No, not money. We’re good on that front. No, I need you because — because I need someone who understands French."

"And you’ve hiked all the way down here to consult _me_? I’m flattered, but — come on, John, we all know you have a resident expert. Don’t tell me he’s never mentioned his French gran? Used to spend all his summers as a teen at her place, up to his eighteenth year. Little place in Brittany, known all over the country for its honey." Lestrade hesitates, pushing the form aside with a sigh. "At least that's what he’s told me when – er, let's just say it wasn't exactly a happy hour. But those summers...I guess they were the only time he was truly happy as a kid."

And this, John thinks, could well explain that. What’s more of a quiz is how he is going to explain "that" to Lestrade. Taking his mobile out, he sets it on the table, under the policeman’s nose. Play straight is the best option here, and to hell with semantic niceties. 

"Here’s the thing," he says, and launches upon a stoic confession. It’s not easy. Not with Lestrade’s wary eyes on him, still warm yet somehow keeping warmth on probation as the tale reaches back into last night and John’s shifty course of action. But John carries on. He knows who he is facing him across the stretch of hard formica: a good man, but a man of his day; a kind-hearted realist, reckless in his own ways, who has shown his unflinching concern for Sherlock in…drugs busts and lies by omission, as John's Sig could testify.

"So yeah..." - John lowers his voice, though the office is sound-proof enough for its transparent walls – "... basically, I’m asking you to translate a private conversation recorded without the party’s consent _and_ under the influence. Which is legally uncorrect and, on a moral level, more than a bit crappy. But I couldn’t see what else to do. And it’s all about trust issues, right?"

Lestrade doesn’t answer.

"I’m trusting him. I’m trusting this is not one of his 'little tricks', to quote a recent acquaintance – not a game, not an experiment on the resident guinea-pig. I’m also trusting you not to use this against him, and I’m trusting you to trust me ditto. Greg. He wants something of me, and I'm willing to give it to him, whatever it takes, only... don’t you see? We have a bug! See, he’s using the booze as a password, so he can hack into whatever emotional storage he’s got compacted deep, deep down there, but it’s no use at all, because he’s Sherlock bloody Holmes, so of _course_ it comes with a program filter. Yeah, I know. I’ll stop with the metaphor thing now. Hmmmm. Okay, just let me say this, just -  I’ll say it this once, right? Before you kick me out with a restraint order. Just, really, please, trust me. With him. And please help us."

Still no answer, and John braces himself to stare back into Lestrade's steady gaze. He has counted up to twenty-nine when Greg nods to no one in particular and stretches out a hand over the paperwork. 

"Okay, gimme."


	3. Chapter 3

This time, he gets the short end of waiting.

He watches, in hope and nerves, as the DI listens to Sherlock’s inaudible voice. John’s line of work is all about body language and quick diagnosis, but there’s seeing, and there’s observing, and then there’s knowing what to make of Lestrade’s knuckles pressed hard to his thin lips and the odd, jubilant nod of his chin. And now the DI’s eyes are widening. _And_ widening. And more, which makes it impossible  to outstare them much as John wants to, so he changes tactics and brings the heel of his hand down on the air between them, but Greg remains too entranced to notice. Then the phone tells Greg something, and the grey-templed head juts back against the office wall with a hollow boom, before Greg all but slams the phone back into John’s palm. 

"There’s more," the rightful owner protests. 

"Not for me, there’s not. Holy baby Jesus. On toast. No, make that baguette. With chili." But Lestrade’s grin is radiant as he sidesteps the desk to clap John’s shoulder. "Talk about previsional analysis! Knew it from day one, you two making sheep's eyes at each other across my friggin' tape, but -" A long whistle. "The things I do for you guys. May as well be a son to me, and now I have to listen to him sounding like a twelve-string bass hitting puberty."

"He, er." Damnit, they're grown boys, the three of them. "He likes me?" 

"That’s one way of putting it. What he wants, Johnny-man, is to lick your mouth goodnight. _Every_ night." Lestrade swallows and surveys his desk top, probably for a tot of iced Arabica, until John waves him on sternly. "He’s memorized each and every muscle on your upper thigh, the left one, because you weren't facing him when you knelt to repair that fridge door. Blueprint’s under his pillow. Next bit, well, there was some static, but I think he was raving about the curve of your armpits. Or kneecaps. Better keep an eye on them, either way."

"That sounds more like you pulling my leg." John is laughing too, head swirled with love and relief, leaning into Lestrade. 

"Nope. Your kneecaps are being worshipped, John, deal with it. And your - what was it again - _crinkly tenor_. That's your voice, ‘cept it actually makes sense in French." Greg gesticulates with stolid gusto, clearly entering the spirit of his task. "Your beautiful toned arms! Your – yeah, what is it, Anderson?"

Anderson glugs something about matching samples and beats a pallid retreat.

"Damnit, you'd think they'd learnt to knock when I'm investigating high-functioning erotica. Well, John, congrats and all that. And may I ask what your intentions are, laddie?"

"My— oh, ah." The brusque swerve from linguistic Cupid to dad-in-command leaves John momentarily speechless. His whole quest has been so focused on deciphering Sherlock's intentions that he has almost forgotten his own. "Well, I'll, ah. Obviously, I'll have to tell him I know about his, his feelings for me. And that I, well, sort of, er, want him too. Very much so. And that we should really sit down and talk about all this." His gaze meets with Lestrade's implacable shake of the head. "Before a strong - cuppa," John concludes lamely.

"Better make it a cup of bubbly. If you want to ensure the targeted results." Lestrade, it seems, is still caught up in his previsional high. 

"Yeah, so he can spout more frogspeak - no offence meant, Grog, er, Greg - and all I can do is clutch him there and then, and chances are he's never been clutched. What if he hyperventilates? Oh god, what if he _hyperventilates in French_?" 

"John, pip down. You're close to crapping yourself, while the answer is obvious. You're a doctor, for Chrissake!" 

"Your point being?"

"Make him taste some of his medicine." John's Captainy scowl freezes into disbelief. "Yeah, you heard me. Mountain, Mahomet, old jazz. He can't flirt in English? So chat him up in French." 

"You can't be serious."

"I've never been more serious. There are twenty days to Christmas, more than enough to cram you with the basics. We can practice here. Or at the pub. Ha! Trade you a crash course in voolay-voo for a pint or two. No, make that three, so we get the atmosphere right from the start." 

"Get the — you know what, that's fucking insane. I couldn't order a French stick in French to save my life!"

"You've done Pashto and Farsi to save your life. 'Course you can do this."

"Bloody hell, Greg!"

" _Bon dieu,_ " Greg edits sunnily. "Deal?"

Whenever the hour has tolled, it has always found John Watson on the ready. "Deal, you bastard."

"Good!" Lestrade strides up to the door. "Oi, you lot! No trespassing until you get the all-clear. Violators will be cast as Santa at the Staff Children's Christmas Party - yeah, all of them. Survivors will be fed to Gregson during said party. Thank ye!" 

The door shuts on a firm click; the whispers rev up on the other side. John thinks he can make out Donovan’s voice in the swarm and wonders how long before she decoys him into a regulation Panda for the Talk. Somehow, the prospect seems far scarier than when he stepped into Mycroft Holmes’s big bad car a year ago. 

"Now, haul your beautiful toned thighs over here and let's get cracking. And I’ll want a full report on the 25th, chapter and verse."

The ballpoint pen is back at work, doodling a vaguely elongated human figure with an unnecessary amount of frizzy hair on the back of a paper sheet. John is almost certain the recto contains part of Budget's loving questionary, but feels mean enough to keep his mouth shut. Greg himself is mouthing something that sounds like "pool" and jabbing at the figure’s shoulder. And John's shift starts in less than two hours.

To quote another long-haired git, tonight's going to be a hard day's night.

 

\-------------------------------------------

 

Yet for all their hardness, the days are scrambling forth — December is on its last legs and resolved to make a sprint of it. It channels half the polar winds from Scandinavia up Baker Street, then blows them back on a second thought. It fills Mrs Hudson’s kitchen with Cox’s luscious Orange Pippins and John’s surgery with late vaccine enthusiasts.

It even enacts a pre-Christmas miracle by galvanizing Sherlock Holmes into a vertical position. Days, nights, chores, cases, stolen naps, they all storm John’s exhausted, excited brain as the twenty-fourth looms closer and closer.

On the twelfth, John’s attempt to shoot down the French nasal vowel goes amok, deeply wounding Lestrade’s pedagogical ego. The ensuing roars send most of his team undercover while “DI’s having words with his boyfriend”, which shows that truth, at least partial, still comes from children’s and policemen’s mouths. 

On the fifteenth, Mycroft Holmes skillfully blackmails his baby brother into finding a Greek interpreter, kidnapped two days before an all-important UNO convention. Mr Melas is duly recovered, and the conference a success, but John has to endure a few nightmares in which Sherlock pours his heart out to him in Cyrillic texts. 

The eighteenth sees Mrs Hudson depart for her sister’s house in Suffolk. John comes home to find sprigs of holly stuck in all the places where Sherlock once voided his spleen and John’s Sig, and a singing card on their table along with a bottle of home-made Glogg. The card is singing ‘God rest you merry, merry, _merry_ gentlemen’ in very suggestive tones. John hijacks it. And the Glogg. There’s a time for suggestiveness, and there’s a time for struggling through _Mais oui, bon dieu, c’est toi que je veux_ [Of course I sodding want you] despite Lestrade’s not-helping comment that he’s sodding pared it to one-letter words. 

On the twenty-first, Sherlock tells Mycroft in rather forceful terms where he can put his invitation to partake of peace, good will and apple stuffing. The same evening, John defeats his arch-enemy, the “doggy letter” as it was once called — the French R. An ecstatic Lestrade kisses the waitress at the Brewery and Tap.

From his surgery, on the twenty-third, John sends Harry a very short text. Upon receiving word that his sister will spend Christmas in a Detox Spa, he allows himself a minute’s contemplation of their respective fates, and the irony thereof, before ushering in his next patient.

And on the twenty-fourth of December, on the strike of eight from the bells at St James’ Church, John Watson enters their common room. His leather vest is dusted with snow and there's a brown paper bag dangling from his fingers on a string handle. Sherlock, who has been persuaded to research the toxic properties of holly through magnification rather than self-induced vomiting, unbends from his microscope. 

"Bollinger Champagne," says John, wagging a finger at his flatmate and looking him straight in the face.

Sherlock’s pauses in disbelief, then throws his head back and starts laughing. "How did you —" He is still laughing when he turns to retrieve an identical brown bag – empty – from the sofa’s shadow. A fire has been lit in the chimney, that provides the shadow. "Yours is Blanc de Noirs Brut, by the way. The cork design is very distinctive."

"Really, Mr Holmes." John sets his bottle on the coffee table, neck and neck with Sherlock’s, which he’s just brought from the fridge, and two cups. "Child’s play, even for a sidekick. Look at your absent tie. Look at the scruff on your slipper’s toes. Oh, and you were queuing before me at Sainsbury’s."

Sherlock’s eyes are brimming with merry tears, but his shoulders keep up a straight line as he uncorks the first bottle – his, naturally. The glasses foam over with the drink and John’s blood, flooding his heart in synch, slows to a dull hum as it has learnt to do before the act. They clink their glasses together, silently.

The wine is frost and velvet to John’s throat. He fights the urge to rasp it as he seeks Sherlock's eyes. Clear as the frost, and reflecting a light known to both of them, Sherlock’s signal that the game is on. Eyes unquiet in the fireglow, silver-taut with... tenacity? Lust? Or apprehension? 

John drops his gaze and lifts his glass. He choses his words carefully, conscious that this could seal all their beginnings to a radiant ever-after...or unmake everything between them.

"Want to taste some more?"

Sherlock’s answer is half-laughed, half-rushed, and wholly, beautifully trusting. "John, yes."

 

\-------------------------------------

 

“Mrs Hudson.” 

“Mrs Hudson.” 

“London.”

“…Why London?”

“Why not?” Sherlock’s voice is already a tad slurred. “Y’toasted the Yard two cups ago. Quite warmly too.”

“Yeah, well, you’re rather expected to hail absent friends and relatives at this stage of – things. Want a refill?”

“Absent friends, then. _Tout court_.”

John’s heart does a little skip. “Right y’are. I give you ships, wooden ships, ships that sail the sea, and I give you the best of ship, friend —” But Sherlock is resting his cheek against his arm, outstretched along the couch’s back, his empty cup at half-mast and his fingertips ghosting John’s short-cropped nape. John shifts course hoarsely and a little prematurely. “The New Year.” 

“Th’year’s an ab — an abs — ”

“An absent friend ?” 

“An ab-stract — entity. You just can’t – toast’n’ – tity.”

This tides them over another wave of laughter as they keel against each other in raw, helpless delight. Sixteen, John thinks, I’m bloody sixteen. Hard as nails from one peep at the V of his shirt, and it’s not like he _has_  tits in the first place. He flicks his eyelids to chase the tears, opening them to a warm touch of breath against his cheek. 

“ _Joyeux Noël, mon Jean_.” [Happy Christmas, my John.] 

John’s first urge is to keep his eyes close and scuttle back into blindness. But no. If he’s doing this, he’s doing it clear-eyed. He licks his lips, as much to flex his tongue as to indulge Sherlock’s very endearing fetish, and smiles. “ _Joyeux Noël,_ Sherlock.”

So far, so good.

Something surges briefly over his friend’s face – a pulse here and gone, not unlike a computer glitch – and John, for one thudding heartbeat, wonders if Sherlock is busy deleting French. He flings himself into the breach. “ _Il— ah — il faut que je te parle_. _Oui?_ ” [I need to speak to you. Yes ?] 

“ _Oui”_ is echoed between them, and John groans under his breath. It’s done, it’s being done, he’s invading another strange land at long last, Sherlock’s heartscape, and only by Sherlock’s own husky invitation. “ _Oui”_ Sherlock has said, and it gives a richer, riper sensation to John’s mouth over the decadent tang of champagne. “ _Oui”_ John repeats for himself, mustering his strength for the final, greatest leap of faith. 

“ _Alors écoute._ ” [All right, listen.] “ _Tout ce que tu m’as dit, je le sais. Et ça me va. Mon tour de te proposer_...” Fuck, double doggy fail. Screw fail, John thinks. You’re in, you’re in to the neck. “ _Je suis là, Sherlock. Touche-moi. Ma bouche, mes mains, mes bras,"_ my cock, the full heavy length of it, yours for the asking, " _pour toi, si tu veux. Si tu me veux. Tout de moi. Ah, bon dieu, Sherlock…"_ [Everything you’ve told me I know now. And I’m fine with it. My turn to propose… I’m here, Sherlock. Touch me. My mouth, my hands, my arms… for you, if you want them. If you want me. All of me. Ah god, Sherlock…]

The mouth that answers him is firmer than any woman’s for all its apparent softness. It has a sweet little knob of flesh on its upper lip, like a bee-sting, that sets John’s spine tingling when Sherlock misses his lips at first and grazes a long moist kiss down his chin. “ _Oui”_ he adds as an afterthought, licking John’s mouth for good measure. 

“ _Oui_ , you infernal tongue-twister.” John wraps his arms around his prize and half-lifts, half-tumbles him on his lap, bending to speak his next words into Sherlock’s naked whorl of ear. “ _Oui_ to this and so, so much more, because I’ll want more, Sherlock. I’ll want what’s inside that smart tight shirt and lower, I’ll want to sit you on my lap again, first thing in the morning, last waking hour, and feel the – oh yes, oh you marvel - slide of your sweet thighs opening for my hand, and god, I’ll want to do things to you that will make you come in any fucking tongue you like, provided you thrash and gush under mine. And again, and again, until I know that clever body of yours inside out, every trick of it, and then more, because there’ll never be enough of pleasuring you. _Oui_ , Sherlock? Say it, love. _Oui_?” 

And there’s more, in fact, because he still hasn’t told Sherlock how he’s watched his mouth in sleep and his bright sheen of sweat in fever. But words no longer matter, because Sherlock’s body is keeling back and forth on his lap, Sherlock’s face brilliant and erratic in pleasure while they rock into each other – faster, faster now, that primal rubbing which once sparked fire out of stone. Long limbs knotted around strong arms and thighs, John’s, pushing the two of them solider into the fierce pulse of rutting. The pulse builds up into heat, and Sherlock is really, actively kissing him now when his breath morphs into a startled cry, and John pushes against the layers still between them, long pushes upwards, until Sherlock sighs, once, and melts against John’s neck.

They’re a mess. Their clothes are a mess. And the couch, where a pale stain is...no, not them. Their cups, dripping over the edge and onto the floor. John begins to giggle, even when Sherlock lifts his face, still chafed from the friction it endured against a cardiganed shoulder. John’s heart overflows at the sight. 

“ _Oh oui_ ,“ he says, and reaches out to stroke Sherlock’s cheek.

 

\----------------------

  

Greg’s text has the decency to pip itself in eight hours later, when John is resurfacing from his third post-coital doze. “ _Alors, mon vieux ???_ ” [What news, mate?] 

John is about to type a human, all too human “!!!” when he is distracted by a body nuzzling closer to his. It seems that Sherlock is waking up, and John drops his mobile where he’s found it – on the floor, nestled in his rumpled trousers – before he turns over carefully on his side of the couch.

He is very curious to hear in which language he will be greeted on their first morning-after. 

Sherlock opens an eye, says “Mmmmm” in his usual decisive tones, and pulls John to him for an open-mouthed kiss.

 

FINIS

 

(If you liked John's declaration to Sherlock, check out [this lovely fanart](http://cupidford.tumblr.com/post/153517790313/johnlock-love-letters-aka-jl3-declarations-of) by Cupidford!)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The epilogue owes much to Dorothy L. Sayers's "Busman's Honeymoon".
> 
> As always, all my thanks to all those who followed and kudosed - the support and encouragement are just as precious as when I started in fandom two years ago. They count. You count.


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